Naruzel
by Sociially-Diisoriiented
Summary: Trapped in a tower for nineteen years, Naruto's life takes an unexpected turn when a man shows up on his windowsill one morning. Literally. SasuNaru


**a / n: **This is a spin-off of the fairy tale (if you haven't guessed yet) _Rapunzel_. I hope that I added enough of my own twist in there to keep the story entertaining and interesting!

This is yet again an entry for a challenge on aarinfantasy (though it is the last for MissMiako's since the challenge is over now! Boohoo =( ).

I hope you like it.  
I obviously don't own Naruto (Kishi-kun turned down my offer of 10 euros and my favorite t-shirt for full ownership of Sasuke and Naruto u_u)  
I also obviously don't own Rapunzel.

* * *

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Konoha, there lived Mr. and Mrs. Uzumaki: two shinobi ninjas. Mrs. Uzumaki was a beautiful young woman: she walked with a grace and posture that emitted confidence and power; her eyes shone with love, her cheeks were a natural rosy hue that came only when everything was right in one's life; her stomach was smooth and round with her unborn child.

One night she woke her husband with a frown on her face. "Darling," she whispered as she gently shook his shoulder.

Mr. Uzumaki woke with an alertness of someone who was used to waking up in the middle of the night. He instantly noticed her slight frown and his hand reached out to caress her naked belly. "What is it? Are you okay? Is it the baby?"

Mrs. Uzumaki covered her husband's hand with hers. "It's fine. _We're_ fine," she reassured him instantly, but then added, "it's just that… I feel like dandelions."

There was a pregnant silence.

"Dandelions?"

She nodded and pushed herself to rest against the headboard. "It's hopeless, I know, but I can't sleep I'm craving it so!"

Dandelions were a rare weed in Konoha, in fact, in their humble village, the only place where dandelions could be found, was in the garden of Kyuubi, the strange ninja who everyone kept their distance from.

Years ago it had been rumoured that Kyuubi had aided missing-nins in the raid of a rival village while out on a solo mission. There had been trials, but due to the lack of evidence, Kyuubi had been let free. The villagers, disagreeing with the verdict, kept their distance from the man from then on, both fearing and hating him: even the Hokage left the man alone.

"Okay," Mr. Uzumaki, like the dutiful husband and soon-to-be father that he was, pushed back the warm covers and got out of bed. "No problem."

Alarmed, Mrs. Uzumaki shot out of bed as well. "You're not serious about going over there?" she hissed.

Mr. Uzumaki shrugged; unlike his wife the thought of trespassing on Kyuubi's property did not unnerve him. "I'm an elite of this village; he's an old crazy bat who never passed his Jounin exam."

Mrs. Uzumaki gripped her husband's arm. "Because every time he 'accidentally' went too far and _killed_ his adversary!"

Mr. Uzumaki planted a kiss on his wife's parted lips. "He's sleeping. I'll mask my charka, all right?" he added at his wife's unconvinced glare. "Don't worry, I'll be in and out of there faster than you can say 'dandelion'."

And indeed, Mr. Uzumaki made his trip in the blink of an eye. He effortlessly jumped over the six-foot high stone wall around his neighbour's garden where the dandelions ran abundant in the yard. In fact, there was barely a green blade of grass visible amongst the yellow mass.

The blonde man smirked. _'He won't even notice I've taken anything_.' Still, despite his thoughts and his brave words to his wife, Mr. Uzumaki only brought back a handful of dandelions to his anxiously waiting wife.

Ecstatic, Mrs. Uzumaki instantly made a delicious salad which the couple instantly devoured. For five weeks, Mr. Uzumaki jumped over the wall one night a week, bringing back dandelions for his deserving wife. For five weeks, Mr. Uzumaki quenched the ever growing craving of his wife for the forbidden flowers one night out of seven.

On the sixth week, on the seventh night over the barrier, the inevitable happened. As Mr. Uzumaki picked out four ripe dandelions, a figure stepped off the front porch, out of the shadows, surprising the guilty thief.

"Well, well, well," Kyuubi, the feared shinobi approached the young man.

Mr. Uzumaki froze, hand clenched around his handful of dandelions. A strange feeling – guilt, an emotion he rarely had to feel – curled his toes and burned like acid in his gut.

"I knew someone was helping themselves to my dandelions, but I never thought it would be _you_, Uzumaki." Kyuubi appeared older than his fifty years. His face was wrinkled; the skin below his eyes was dark with what had to be lack of sleep. His skin itself was a pale off-white, like it had been long since the man had spent more than two consecutive hours in the daylight. The only aspect of the man that seemed to have remained immune to age was his long, shocking red hair, that he kept tied back in a high ponytail.

His haggard appearance boosted Mr. Uzumaki's confidence and assured that his earlier statement of old man being simply crazy, selfish, and relatively harmless had been an accurate one. He shoved down his mounting feeling of guilt.

"I would have asked, but I knew you would have refused, as you always refuse to help someone in need," the blue-eyed man replied accusingly.

"So you lower yourself to stealing?" Kyuubi smiled, but there was no humour or warmth in the tightly pulled back skin.

"My wife, as you know, is pregnant, and is craving them. Surely even you know that a pregnant woman's cravings are strong enough to drive them to the brink of insanity, if they are not satisfied."

"That is no excuse! Nor any concern of mine," Kyuubi snapped, his friendly façade vanishing. "You have taken something of mine and for that I will have to punish you!"

Mr. Uzumaki froze as he waited for his punishment, he'd take it; Kyuubi was right, he'd taken something that wasn't his, it was wrong and now he had to face the consequences.

"I want your child."

Mr. Uzumaki almost laughed at the ridiculous demand; and he would have laughed, if he hadn't thought his ears were playing tricks on him. "_What_?"

"When your unborn child comes to this world, you will hand him over to me."

This time, the man did laugh. "No," he said after the disbelief over the ridicule demand had passed. He stared Kyuubi in the eyes and repeated his answer, firmly. "No."

"You have broken the law," Kyuubi hissed, his patience growing thin, "you must be punished!"

"I agree. I will take a punishment, but an _adequate_ punishment."

"I will say what an adequate punishment is or is not!" the man yelled. "Your unborn child has eaten my dandelions, and therefore I will take your child until all the flowers you have taken from me have been repaid; I will keep your child one year for every flower you have taken from me. It is that, or your life."

"And I've refused," Mr. Uzumaki spat back. He straightened himself, the dandelions he'd been holding fell to the ground. He released his hold on his charka. He was one of Konoha's elite; an ANBU member, unknown to Kyuubi. The old man stood no chance against him. "I will give you neither my child's life nor my own!"

He prepared for an attack from the old man, but he did not – could not – predict the sudden explosion of charka that was so powerful it knocked him off his feet; so powerful that he he would have knocked in to the wall, but there was no longer a wall there, the charka had destroyed it and Mr. Uzumaki fell amongst its rubble.

Startled, the man looked up and his eyes tripled in size when he saw a strange red charka encircling the man. In moment, Mr. Uzumaki knew that he would not win the fight. Slowly, he got to his feet, ready to counterattack, when Kyuubi spoke.

"Your wife has already lost her child; will you really take her husband from her as well?"

"You said it was my life or my child's!"

"His life, or _both_ your lives," Kyuubi corrected himself. Mr. Uzumaki let his fists drop.

To save his son, he would gladly die. He was not afraid of death, but he could not abandon his wife. He mentally counted all the flowers he had taken. He had never counted the weeds, but he had always been careful to never take more than four at a time. He could have taken anywhere from twenty to twenty-four dandelions; he had taken twenty to twenty-four years of his child's life, of a life that had not even started yet.

"The Hokage won't let you take our child!" he protested, though weakly.

"I'm not especially worried about the Hokage."

Mr. Uzumaki's heart sank. Did Kyuubi have something on the Hokage that would prevent the man from helping them? "How many years?" he asked, for the second time that night an emotion he rarely felt made his stomach feel and sink like lead: fear. "Exactly how many dandelions have I taken?"

Kyuubi smiled horribly in his triumph. "Twenty-one."

There was a silence as Mr. Uzumaki weighed the options in his mind.

"What is your answer?" Kyuubi barked impatiently.

Hating himself, hating the dandelions, hating _Kyuubi_, Mr. Uzumaki nodded, swallowing the thick lump in his throat. "Okay," the words tasted like bile in mouth, felt like betrayal against his lips. "My answer is yes."

And so that's why five months later, a month and a half after Mrs. Uzumaki had given birth to a healthy baby boy, Kyuubi showed up at the Uzumaki household to claim his payment. Sobbing, Mrs. Uzumaki handed her son, her life, to the old man, begging that he at least didn't change her son's name. She had named him Naruto.

Kyuubi took the newborn child with surprising carefulness and placed him on the kitchen table. He wordlessly performed a few hand seals and placed his fingers on Naruto's body. Mr. and Mrs. Uzumaki watched in an awed fear as a strange red spiral formed around their child's navel.

"What is that for?" Mrs. Uzumaki dared to ask.

"A seal," Kyuubi replied, picking up the child again. "So that his charka will remain blocked and unreachable to him. As long as your child is with me, he will not know what it is like to be a shinobi ninja."

Kyuubi left the heartbroken parents to wonder if they would truly ever see their baby again. He took Naruto deep in to the forest, deeper then people, even ninjas, cared to venture. There, he locked Naruto away in an abandoned tower. High up in the tower, he sealed the only door with a getsu so when Naruto looked at it, he would just see the continuation of the wall. All he left Naruto with to look out at the world was a window; a window large enough so Kyuubi could pass through it, but it was so high up from the ground that Naruto, without his ninja powers, would never dare to try and escape through.

And there Naruto grew up. For nineteen years he lived in the tower, dreaming of the day he would finally be released. Kyuubi taught Naruto how to read and write, he even brought him books to educate himself (Kyuubi hated ignorance) and one day he brought a spins wheel so Naruto could learn how to sew. With nothing else to do during the long days, trapped in a room twelve feet long and ten feet wide, Naruto quickly learned to sew and soon became a master in creating anything from mittens to the most complex of quilts (the fabric, of course, provided by Kyuubi). Kyuubi, pleased with Naruto's developing talent, started bringing him more and more demands of what he should sew, and Naruto believed the man was selling his work at the market and, judging from all the work he had, was making quite a bit of money.

So, for nineteen years, Naruto lived in the tower receiving visits solely from Kyuubi every night (for the old man never visited during the day). Though Naruto far from liked the man, he was grateful for the constant visits; in a way, he was the one who kept Naruto from losing his mind over the solitude.

"What will happen to me when I'm released?" Naruto wondered one night. It wasn't the first time he thought such a thought, but it was the first time he'd ever dared ask it out loud while the man was in the room.

The old man was sitting on the bed and Naruto was by the window, combing his long blonde hair. He measured it every month, he had never cut his hair and it almost touched the forest floor when Naruto let it hang out the window.

"What do you mean?" Though he'd aged, though he appeared more haggard and harmless than ever, Kyuubi's hair was as radiantly red as ever; and Naruto knew that despite his age, the man was still very agile and dangerous.

"Will I integrate well with others? How will I talk to them? Will my parents still want me?" Naruto had always asked himself such questions, but with his twenty-first year approaching, the thoughts came much more frequently, accompanied with a heavy feeling of anxiety in his gut.

"How should I know?" Kyuubi snapped, as comforting as ever. "I don't. And frankly, I don't care," he stood. "Don't forget the quilts."

"Right," Naruto muttered miserably, tying up his hair so it wouldn't get in the way when he walked around. He moved out of the way as Kyuubi climbed on the windowsill and he watched enviously as Kyuubi effortlessly leaped to a nearby branch.

Naruto knew about ninjas, vaguely though, as it was the one thing Kyuubi refused to teach him about. He knew what charka was, but only in name, and knew nothing of how to use it or how it stimulated the ninjas' powers. He also knew he would have had charka, or the potential to use it, had Kyuubi not sealed it off to until he left the cursed tower. Naruto vowed that when the power was returned to him, he would train hard to master his power and become a powerful ninja.

He closed his eyes and let his head drop against the side of the open window, when he was sure Kyuubi was long gone and long out of hearing range, and parted his lips to sing. He'd started singing years ago when Kyuubi, in a particularly good mood one night, had been humming to himself. Intrigue piqued, Naruto had started humming himself. Liking the sounds he'd made, Naruto had asked Kyuubi for music books. Though he knew nothing of the melody or rhythm associated to the lyrics written in the books, Naruto had taken to singing them his own way, the way they felt right to his ears. Every time he sang, the melody and rhythm of his songs changed slightly.

It was pitch black before Naruto finally crawled in to bed, mentally crossing off another day of his imprisonment. He drifted off a few minutes later in to a deep, dreamless sleep, oblivious of the man that stood on the ground below him, staring up at the abandoned tower's window. A beautiful singing voice had captivated him and he followed it, off the path, all the way to the tower, and there, amongst the trees, he set up camp, his mission forgotten as all he wanted to do was wait until morning when he could meet the owner of the melodious voice that had captured his heart right away.

The next morning Naruto, as per usual, woke with the sun. It was hard not to, as the window had no means of closing (it was more accurate to say it was a hole in the wall than a window) and had no curtains to block out the sun that rose in the east, the very direction the window faced. Naruto had put up curtains, so he could sleep in, at one point, but the room had felt even smaller, more confiding, and he'd missed the view of the only bit of the world he could see; he'd missed the stars and light of the moon as he fell asleep at night and had taken the curtains down. Naruto ate a light breakfast of fruit, berries and bread and then made his bed.

When he turned around the blonde haired man nearly screamed when he saw someone on the windowsill. Someone who wasn't Kyuubi. Someone who was a male, crouched, and staring at Naruto.

Getting over his initial shock, Naruto found that, despite the man's rather intimidating glare, he wasn't scared. Merely curious. And very excited.

"Who are you?" thankfully, he was spared the question of '_what_ are you' as he knew, from his picture books that the other before him was a human; he knew from his anatomy books that the other was a man.

"Uchiha Sasuke," the statue finally spoke and all but glided from the windowsill and in to the room.

Uchiha Sasuke was taller than Naruto; his hair had bangs reaching his nose at the front and then cropped gradually shorter in the back. His hair was black, like the night sky at midnight on nights with no moon and no stars. His skin was white, almost pale, unlike Naruto's golden tan (as the spot in front of the window was the perfect place to lay down and tan.)

When Sasuke made no move to do or say anything else (his eyes were roaming around the small room), Naruto racked his brain to say something else. It was the first time in his whole nineteen years of living that he'd seen another person other than Kyuubi. He felt giddy. He wanted to talk, ask questions, he wanted to touch him to know what another person felt like: Kyuubi was not a touchy-feely guy, the only time he touched Naruto was to hit him when he goofed up.

"Why are you here?" Naruto asked, starting on his long list of questions.

Sasuke turned to look at him; his eyes were as dark as Naruto's were blue. "I heard your voice."

Whereas a normal person might have felt embarrassment at having been overheard, Naruto grinned. "Yeah?" a feeling he couldn't place made him smile even more. He felt somewhat in awe that his voice could carry all the way to one of the paths; he felt strangely satisfied that it had spiked enough curiosity in the seemingly stoic man before him to draw him out of his way to come look for the source of the singing.

"Do you live here?" it was Sasuke's turn to ask a question.

Naruto bit his lip. "Yeah," he answered, darkly. "I have for a while now," under his breath, as he exhaled, he added, "though by no choice of my own."

Sasuke heard and his head, which had turned to gaze around the room some more, snapped back to Naruto's. Naruto startled, he could basically see the man's mind working behind the hard eyes.

"How long?"

Naruto closed his eyes, looked away. "Nineteen years."

Naruto held his breath as he waited for Sasuke's reaction. He turned to look at the man, too curious as to see the reaction to keep looking away.

"Uzumaki?"

This time the reaction came from Naruto: his eyes tripled in size, almost falling out of their sockets. "H-how do you know?"

Sasuke let out a long breath as his suspicions were confirmed. "Whoa…" his eyes skittered briefly around again (Naruto longed to know what he was thinking) and then took a seat, without asking, on Naruto's bed. "Is this where you've been taken to? Where are your kidnappers?"

"Kidnapper?" Naruto asked, startled, plopping down on the twin bed beside Sasuke.

"It's someone who-"

"I know what a kidnapper is!"

"Hn. Living out here by yourself, I would have thought you some kind of idiot."

Naruto had read enough books to know that he'd been insulted. He bristled. "Hey, don't think I'm some kind of stupid ignorant, bastard!"

He wondered if all humans were as rude, until he dared look at the man's eyes again and found them twinkling with amusement. Slowly, Naruto relaxed and hesitantly grinned. Quickly, he got back on subject. "So, why do you think I was kidnapped?"

"That's what your parents told everyone."

At hearing that Sasuke knew his parents, Naruto's heart jumped, his breath caught and for a moment everything stood still; even time. "M-my parents?" he breathed out. "Do you know them well?"

"Not especially, no," he looked away. "Some of my family did … but they're all dead now."

Naruto flinched. "Oh. I'm … sorry."

Sasuke smirked. "You hardly helped in their deaths, I'm sure. So, what happened to you, if you weren't kidnapped?"

From the moment he'd seen Sasuke on the window, he'd known the man was a ninja. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if being a ninja only meant pain. Kyuubi had been a stronger ninja then his parents in consequences he'd lost his whole childhood; Sasuke was a ninja and his whole family had been murdered. Naruto vowed that when he became a ninja, he'd fight to keep the ones he loved safe and happy. He launched in to the story of what happened; or Kyuubi's version of what had happened. He knew that his parents had only told everyone he had been kidnapped as to not risk friends going after Kyuubi and then having Kyuubi killing them and having Kyuubi harm him as well.

"They were selfish and weak," was Sasuke's reply. "Your father should have died fighting and then your mother should have done the same to protect you."

This time, Naruto jumped off the bed. "They were not!" he shouted. "In giving me up, I will be returned in a few years and I'll finally get to meet them."

"And all that for a weed," Sasuke commented dryly.

Naruto frowned, looked accusingly at Sasuke. "Dandelions are flowers."

"Weeds."

"They've very pretty, like flowers."

"They grow where no one wants them. They limpest fields. Like weeds."

"It's not like they do any harm!"

"They did to your family."

Naruto snapped his mouth shut and looked away from Sasuke. The man was infuriating! And yet, Naruto felt a strange thrill at being with him, and couldn't even stay angry at him for all the tactless comments he was making. "It's not like it was the _dandelion's_ fault," he retorted pathetically.

Sasuke smirked. "Idiot," he muttered, but it sounded almost endearing and Naruto let it slide. "Why don't you leave?"

"I don't know if you've realized," Naruto was really getting to put his sarcasm to practice with this man, "but there's only one way out of here," he jutted his thumb toward the window "and the ground's pretty far down."

"You're a ninja, aren't you?"

Naruto winced, suddenly ashamed of the seal he could nothing about. "Not exactly," he whispered, turning away.

Sasuke waited for the explanation, but Naruto couldn't bring himself to lift his shirt and show him the red spiral encircling his navel.

"That doesn't matter," Sasuke finally said, "I'll take you down with me. You don't have to stay here. I'll bring you home."

"N-no!" Naruto jumped to his feet in a panic. "I mean, thank you for the offer, but I can't. I have to stay. If I leave, he'll know where I've gone and he'll probably kill my parents. And then me."

"Crazy old bastard," Sasuke bristled, but even he seemed aware of Kyuubi's power and made no foolish death threats towards him.

The two young adults talked for a long while, and when it came time for him to leave, Naruto walked Sasuke to the window. "You'll visit again?" he asked hopefully; now that'd he'd gotten a taste of human interaction Naruto was terrified to go another day without it.

"I'll return once I've completed my missions," Sasuke promised and Naruto watched enviously as Sasuke jumped out in to the world Naruto had been banned from.

* * * * * * * *

For one week, there was no sight of Sasuke. For one week, Naruto sulked around, unable to do anything other then wait. He endured Kyuubi's wrath when he failed to complete the quilts on time, but even then he couldn't do anything other than lie on his bed, or sit at the window, and wish Sasuke back.

Finally, though, Sasuke returned and Naruto felt the world had started moving again; as though the whole time Sasuke had been absent it had stopped, gone on hold waiting for the man to return. After that, Sasuke visited every day, though he made sure to leave early so that he wouldn't cross Kyuubi on his way back to the village.

"What do you and Kyuubi talk about at night?" Sasuke wondered early one morning. Usually, he didn't say much as Naruto did most of the talking and questioning; but that day, Naruto had been strangely silent.

Staring out the window pensively, Naruto shrugged. "Nothing, really, he doesn't like to talk much: not about his life or anything that's of any interest to me, really."

"He sells your quilts at the market."

"I figured as much."

"Doesn't that infuriate you? He's exploiting you!"

"Sasuke-!" Naruto spun around to look at his friend lying on the bed. His heart slowed down to a dangerous speed as he got off the chair and advanced toward the bed. Sasuke, concerned and intrigued by Naruto's strange behaviour, pushed himself up to a sitting position as Naruto knelt by the bed.

"Sasuke," Naruto's voice was but a whisper as he transfixed Sasuke with his intense look. "Can I touch you?"

"What?"

"Just your face. I just want to know … what another person feels like."

Sasuke stared at Naruto. Naruto stared right back, scared of Sasuke's reaction, but determined not to be stared down.

"Okay."

Unable to even smile he was so nervous, Naruto reached out to stroke Sasuke's cheek. His fingers had barely grazed the man's cheek that he snapped his hand away, startled by a strange tingling feeling that had erupted through his fingers when they'd connected with the other man. Breathing deeply, he reached over again, this time he kept his fingers on the skin (finding the tingling feeling not strange, but pleasant after all).

"It's not as soft as I thought it would be," he whispered.

"Well, I do shave," Sasuke whispered back.

Naruto inhaled as he traced Sasuke's jaw line, down to his chin. Unknowingly, both he and Sasuke leaned in towards each other.

"Do you?" Sasuke's hot breath brushed against Naruto's face.

He smelled like berries.

"Do I what?"

"Shave."

Naruto grinned. "Nah. Don't have a reason to."

Sasuke smirked, but both smiles died away as their eyes found one another's. Sasuke's eyes fluttered wildly; down and then back up again in to Naruto's clear blue eyes. Sasuke's eyes were a dark black that seemed unceasing.

"Sasuke-" but Naruto was cut off by a pair of dry lips that pressed against his. At first, there was no pressure. It felt almost as though Sasuke had misjudged their distances and leaned in to find that Naruto's mouth had been in the way. But as Sasuke didn't pull back, it became evident that it had been a calculated move and no mistake at all.

Naruto had read about the feeling. Except in all the books he'd read, it had always been one between a man and a woman. Never had he ever read about two men being physically attracted to each other. No book at even so much as _hinted_ towards such a thing. But the blonde man was not a fool. He knew that he was a man; he knew that Sasuke was a man; and he _knew_ that he was attracted to Sasuke.

When Sasuke moved his mouth against his, Naruto mimicked the movement; when he felt Sasuke's tongue brush against his lips, Naruto's lower regions stirred and he parted his lips to allow the smooth, wet muscle in to his mouth; and when Sasuke pulled Naruto on to bed, the young man eagerly complied, posing no resistance as Sasuke pulled off his shirt and taught Naruto what no book Kyuubi had ever brought him had ever talked about in detail.

* * * * * * * *

After that day, the relationship between Naruto and Sasuke changed drastically; the majority of their time together was spent in silence –lest one counted the incessant panting and the vivacious groans and moans- on Naruto's bed. Only when they were all spent and lying half on top of each other, sticky and spent, but satisfied, did the talking begin. But as the days went by, Naruto found he was more content drifting in and out of sleep by Sasuke's side than chatting.

One afternoon, when Naruto drifted back out of sleep, he was shocked that the sky had already started to darken. The fact triggered panic and he bolted upright in bed, jerking awake a peacefully asleep Sasuke.

"What's going on?" he asked, fully awake in seconds due to the reflexes of a well trained shinobi.

"It's already nightfall! Kyuubi will be here any minute. You have to go," Naruto explained frantically, scrambling to dress and as he handed Sasuke his own clothes; he slipped on Sasuke's pants, as he handed him his shirt.

Cursing, Sasuke flew out of bed. But, it was too late. By the time Sasuke had pulled on his boxers, Kyuubi had arrived. There was a long silence as Kyuubi took in the third member in the room.

"Uchiha," he snarled finally, before Naruto could gather up enough courage to introduce him. There were no inquiries as to what the man – what '_Uchiha_' – was doing in the tower; nor how they had met. Kyuubi could smell the man all over Naruto; he could sense Sasuke's trace still lingering over the blonde. Not to mention they were wearing (or, in Sasuke's case, holding) each other's close. As for the second – how they had met – Kyuubi wasn't interested in such trivial information: only the outcome, only what had happened, mattered to him.

He rounded on Naruto, his mouth pulled back in an ugly sneering; marring his already antediluvian features. "You dirty whore!" though he spoke no more than a whisper, Naruto flinched as though he'd yelled at him. "You disgusting faggot!" this time, he did yell, and moved toward Naruto at such a speed that the blonde didn't realize what had happened until it was over:

Kyuubi had rushed toward him with a charka-laced fist raised that would have hit its target had Sasuke not had the reflex to react and the speed to reach him in time.

Naruto let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

"Don't you dare touch him," Sasuke threatened, still clenching Kyuubi's fist in his own.

Snarling, the old man withdrew his fist. "Was it your hair that did him in?" he accused Naruto, though his eyes laid still on Sasuke. "It _is _soft and flowing like a woman's, isn't it, Uchiha? His body slim from lack of training, and is fair voice; as well."

"That's none of your business," Naruto snapped, stepping out from behind Sasuke.

"Shut it! I'm going to deal with you after!"

"You'll have to get past me first."

Kyuubi smirked. "Then I guess you will die first, Uchiha; before the disgusting traitor."

Sasuke twirled around then, picking up Naruto as though he weighed nothing more than a feather and ran to the window and jumped out. For the time in his life, Naruto felt the wind rushing against his face as the gravity pulled them down to the ground. Landing perfectly on his feet, Sasuke released Naruto.

Naruto stood unsteadily on the ground, confused at what had just happened. Confused at was happening. But, he was on the ground. He was _out_!

"Naruto, run!" Sasuke shouted him, his head tilted upward toward the tower that Kyuubi had just jumped out of.

In a daze, Naruto watched as Sasuke performed a combination of signs with his hand, brought his fingers up to his mouth and … Naruto squinted as a sudden blast of warm hair caught him off guard. He couldn't look away, though, as he saw brilliant, enormous flames flowing out of Sasuke's mouth to engulf the tower and lighting the trees around it on fire as well.

"Naruto –run!"

"But, the fire…" Naruto shook his head, unable to tear his gaze away from the flames, eating away at the trees.

"It just bought us some time. It wouldn't be that easy. Get out of here, I'll hold him off."

Naruto nodded, but didn't move. The fire. It was the first time he'd seen fire. It was the first time he'd felt the warmth of a fire.

"Naruto! Run. _Naru_—"

—Naruto bolted up right in bed; his heart slammed in to his ribcage as the crackling red flames still burned his vision. He exhaled in one long sigh of relief as his vision cleared and he took in the room: the orange dresser between the door leading to the living room and their bedroom bathroom; his clothes strewn on the floor, Sasuke's folded neatly and placed on the chair beside his side of the bed; the half-open window giving view to their neglected garden.

Grinning, Naruto leaned back against the headboard of the bed, his heart calming down as reality took place over the world his subconscious had created.

"Stop moving so much," a voice grunted beside him as the mass it belonged to (under the sheets on Naruto's side) shifted. Naruto's heart leapt at the sight; despite having regained sense of what was real and was fiction, he was still beyond thrilled to see Sasuke safe and sound at his side; and not fighting (and scared of losing to) the demon that was inside Naruto at that very moment.

"Sorry," Naruto glanced over the side of the bed at the book that must have fallen from his hands when he'd fallen asleep. A pretty blonde woman smiled back up at him from behind her spins wheel and Naruto shuddered. Sasuke was right, he had to stop reading those books; they were clearly twisted and **not** for children, no matter what the rating suggested.

Naruto slid back down, pulling the covers back over his bare chest and turned over to snuggle up to the warm body that was Sasuke. He sighed contently, more than willing to let his horrible dream – or, more like nightmare – slip from his mind and be forgotten.

He let his eyes close softly and willed sleep – a more peaceful sleep this time – to claim him. Suddenly, his eyes popped open again and he shook his lover.

"Sasuke, what would you think of it if I let my hair grow out?!"


End file.
